Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/260

246 a simple and irrefragable natural law refuting peremptorily the thesis of the enthusiastic propugnators of the pedigree rooting somewhere amid a grinning tribe gamboling in the wild forests of Asia or Africa. The criterion that the human race has large, round hands and blunt canine teeth would be sufficient of itself to establish the truth that no monkey-blood is pulsating in our veins; but there are more distinctive features. Men have strong, well-shaped legs, walk constantly in an erect posture, and enjoy the faculty of speech.

The monkeys rank near humanity in the general organization of the world; they show in many instances much likeness with mankind, physically as well as intellectually. But a further concession would be a denial of positive natural laws. Nay! old Adam was not a monkey, not a baboon, not even a chimpanzee!



NE day, in the British Museum, while waiting a moment in a room where entomological specimens were exhibited, I saw two workmen bending over a case containing butterflies and moths.

"There is the Camberwell Beauty," said one, pointing out a particular example to his companion.

"Ay!" was the ejaculatory response, and the tone of that "Ay!" I am not likely to forget. It took me at once to the speaker's probably humble home, stored with treasured specimens in their boxes, pinned down low, labeled and arranged. How many hours of stormy evenings had not been pleasurably spent in sorting and debating, in setting and classifying, these downy bits of Nature's finery! From how much worse employment may not these "little beauties" have saved their owner!

There is no doubt that in England, as well as in France and Germany, the collecting of moths is a very general recreation as compared with the United States. That it is harmless is a negative praise; that a pursuit of its objects is healthful, and takes the man who works in the city out into the fresh country air, is a positive recommendation. But the labor is also instructive. Things have now changed very much since the days of Malpighi, and biology is a respected and necessary study. And throughout the world of animated beings it may be safely said that the growth and changes of life can nowhere be so easily and pleasantly observed as in the rearing of butterflies and moths from the egg. As to butterflies, it may be asserted that they are less interesting than their cousins the moths, who constitute the